Former abortion doctor urges South Dakotans to vote for life

Sioux Falls, S.D., Sep 24, 2008 / 12:47 am (CNA).- Pro-life activists in South Dakota have launched a television ad featuring Dr. Bernard Nathanson, one of the founding members of NARAL, who calls on South Dakotans to vote to ban the use of “abortion as birth control.”

In a TV ad supporting Measure 11 in South Dakota, Dr. Nathanson explains that he and his colleagues who founded NARAL created it to “export our pro-abortion mentality across the land.” He also reveals that, “One of our strategies, in order to mislead the American people, was to deny what we knew to be true, that an abortion kills an existing human being.”

“This was the greatest mistake of my life… and the greatest mistake in our nation’s history,” states Nathanson, who performed 75,000 abortions and at one point ran the nation’s largest abortion clinic.

The new ad is part of an effort by VoteYesForLife.com to convince voters to pass a bill that would ban abortion in South Dakota, with exceptions being made for rape and incest, and to preserve the life and health of the mother.

The campaign was required to gather around 18,000 signatures to place Measure 11 on the November 4 ballot, and they succeeded in securing 58,000 signatures, according to VoteYesForLife.com.

“It’s clear that Measure 11 is what the people of South Dakota have been asking for. It is going to take a huge coordinated effort to mobilize a state-wide grass-roots effort, but we are already seeing it happen,” said Brandi Gruis from VoteYesForLife.com. “Measure 11 is the reasonable law South Dakota asked for.”

On August 12, the pro-abortion groups NARAL and Planned Parenthood Action Fund reacted to the effort by holding a press conference in Washington D.C.

“Let’s not kid ourselves," Nancy Keenan, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice America, told reporters. "The people behind this effort [want] to make South Dakota the first step in a long-term campaign to mount a legal challenge to Roe."